+ APOC IV +

Our fourth APOC game has come and gone, and a hot sweaty time was had by all. Nine dudes, one huge L-shaped table, four turns of carnage.

Tyranids & Tyranids & Tyranids & Chaos vs Black Templar & Black Templar & Dark Angels & Blood Angels & Witch Hunters [18000]

I ended up running 6500 points of Chaos - Death Guard, The Fallen, The Anarcho boys - that largely deployed on one 6x4 on the right arm of the L-table and smashed against the majority of both Templar armies. The objective on our side would end up with the last 3 of 42 plague marines standing on it but with BT characters surrounding it, so merely contested.

The left arm of the L-table saw the medium Nid swarm (a mere 3000) obliterated by the combined BA and WH armies, in what was largely due to him deploying too far away from the rest of our armies - if he had faced off across from just the Sisters he wouldn't have had to face the BA player for a turn or two, instead of the turn one assaults and short range rapid fire that he received by spreading in front of the two armies. Despite the appearance of 4 of my 8 Kharns (;D), a land raider and 3 Fallen obliterators (who nuked the WH fire support titan), the left objective was securely in the hands of the Imperium.

From the game's opening the center segment of the L was locked down by the largest of the bug swarms, including the heirophant and her little heirodule buddy. By Turn 4 the big girl had been wounded twice but with underlings swarming the objective at her feet that one easily went to the jaws of the Devourer (also Chaos). Otherwise that blue bug swarm spent much of the game slamming against the DA across from him and the smallest bug swarm to my evil lads' left, as well as sending out flank marchers (2 carnifex detonated the baneblade mere feet in front of the chaos firebase) and lictors (killed exorcists like it was going out of style).

So with 1 objective held per side and the other still contested, it came down to a ...

DRAW

Now a side note on how happy APOC:RELOAD makes me. My interest in APOC games has seriously wanned in the last months, but having gotten confirmed rumors on some of the race specific assets in RELOAD I'm totally back in for big games. There's just some crazy shit in that book that really brings in the highly specialized, oh so characterful, EPIC-scaled mayhem and feats that you can't get in a standard 40k game. For APOC IV we test ran a couple of the Chaos ones, so I ended up with three assets:

Shield Generator - An oldy but new to me. The 4+ save over my two defilers and noise marines insured their survival, over and over. It was quite impressive.

Demon Shell - Allows a chaos model with a bolt weapon to fire a demon shell instead of a normal round. 24" SD AP1 Assault 1 7" blast, if you roll a 1 to hit it causes a single SD hit to the firer! In this game I had a Fallen lord deep strike and shoot the mini-nuke right into a clump of Dark Angels, removing a huge number of the deluded fools. The Fallen lord would go on to fight Azrael in single combat, dying simultaneously with his former brother.

Major Possession - On a 3+ a greater demon possesses an enemy IC instead of a chaos champ (note that I think the enemy gets to pick which IC, but I didn't know this at the time). On Saturday my Great Generic One made the 3+ roll and erupted out of Samael, telefragging the über-jetbiker and then pouncing on a DA librarian and terminator retinue. His rampage was short-lived, as GK terminators waded over and cut him down, but the sheer brutality of possessing an enemy special character is amazing. Easily my favorite new Chaos asset!

For $25 APOC:RELOAD seems like a good buy, even just to check out all the other assets. A couple examples: "Holy Relic" jacks a chaplain's combat prowess through the roof but when he dies the relic drops and becomes another objective. "Rokk 'Em Lads" has the orks bombard the board with fist-shaped asteroids, causing 10" explosions that scatter D6 feet (only hit on a HIT + 1). "Fire on My Coordinates" brings an orbital barrage down upon a surrounded guardsmen with a vox. "Indiscriminate Bombardment" has a chaos player place one barrage template, the enemy a second one, and then the chaos player a third. And so on.

Painting: Dakka Painting Challenge entry
Building: N/A